The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth With Sixteen Illustrations. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton |
The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth | ||
POEMS OF SCIENCE.
Poetry, like painting, usually deals only with the appearances of things—not the reality. Science, having enlarged our knowledge, opens a new field, in which the imagination is still actively employed in the realisation of truth, and the poetic faculty has the widest possible scope. The Author has ventured on a little excursion to this new and inexhaustible field, and has arranged the fruits of his expedition under the head “Poems of Science.”
THE CENTRAL HALL
IN THE NEW PALACE AT WESTMINSTER.
The laws that govern England, lies a way
Through many vaulted corridors and halls,
So straight that—when the folding-gates of brass,
The beautiful gates before the House of Peers,
And those more modest doors of British oak
That close the entrance to the other place,
Are open—from the Speaker's chair direct
Unto the royal throne, a path is clear,
Whereby the golden splendour of that seat
Gleams through a line of halls and corridors
Into the Commons' House.
There is a Central Hall—an octagon,
Lofty and rich, like some fair chapter-house,
Whence other ways pass forth to other halls,
To one whose frescoes realise the dreams
Will stand gigantic statues of the dead
Who in times past made England what she is.
And through this marble avenue you pass
Down to the fine old hall of Westminster,
Where the death-sentence with sad, solemn tones,
Too often sounded in a sterner time.
And when I stand beneath the chandelier,
Of Gothic brass most exquisitely wrought,
Suspended through the opening in the roof—
(A ring with eight large bosses richly carved,
To which the ribs of all the vault converge)—
I feel that I am at the very heart
And inmost centre of our modern life;
For in that hall there waits a messenger
More swift and mighty than the Genii
Of whom we read in old Arabian tales.
He is your slave—command him! He will fly
By night or day to far provincial towns,
And take your message—yes! the very words,
And bring an answer instantly. Nay, more—
If you should tell this spirit—for he hath
No substance more corporeal or gross
Than lightest Ariels born of poets' dreams—
If you should tell this spirit to proceed
To one of those old cities on the Loire,
The sea would not deter him. Where the waves
Sap the chalk cliffs at Dover he will dive,
And shoot as swiftly through the density
Of the deep waters as through summer air,
And rise upon the distant shore of France,
Which as a thin, faint line, the sentinel
At Dover, looking from the castle cliff,
Sees when the day is clear. There is no sign
Upon the sea that our swift messenger
Has passed beneath it and returned again.
He does not break the surface when he dives;
He rises unperceived, invisible
As exhalations on a cloudless day.
And when he leaves the Palace, or returns,
No doors are opened. In his swiftest flight
He moves in perfect silence, like a sphere
Sweeping its noiseless circle round the sun.
FALLING STARS.
We sometimes tremble for the inner sense
That feeds upon the beautiful; and sighing,
Repeat old tales, though faith is banished hence.
More precious truths than they possessed of old,
We envy them the pleasure of believing,
Hoarding old coins in fields of Nature's gold.
No longer current in our modern thought;
But those who made them marked them with their spirit,
And so we keep them fondly, as we ought.
Of falling stars—that every one was tied
By a thread spun at somebody's creation,
And that the thread divided when he died.
To take a census on the starry nights,
When the high Fates, those stern, mysterious weavers,
Hung out in heaven a multitude of lights.
Down the bright sky—extinguished in the dark,
They knew that some one's earthly life was ending,
And saw a death in every dying spark.
Contain what we can ill afford to lose;
And this may still be useful to remind us
Of death. Its warning let us not refuse.
Between the tenure of our little lives
And the bright stars, their fall excites reflection,
And silent prayers for some one who survives.
Into the dark, think not the legend lies;
For every moment there are mourners weeping,
And every moment some beloved one dies.
Of human features; but I will unfold
A store of wealth—man's new and bright possession,
Gathered of late in Nature's fields of gold.
I walked upon the mountains with my friend;
We started after dusk, and I remember
The stars were bright before our journey's end.
I paused to watch a star that suddenly
Shot and, extinguished, left a trail of glory,
That died into faint light upon the sky.
About those glancing lights on heaven's floor
That awes the heart.” “And if you knew their history,”
Answered my friend, “you still would wonder more.”
Whirling in one great orbit round the sun;
And, swiftly coursing through the silent regions
Of empty space, they ever float and run.
Small bodies banded in unnumbered hosts;
Some drop—not from fatigue, but gravitation—
Upon the mountains, continents, and coasts.
In the deep waters of the lonely seas,
And every year are some old comrades missing,
Yet still the flock is like a swarm of bees.
They reach the limits of our atmosphere,
Their dark, invisible bodies, hot and glowing,
Blaze as they pass, then swiftly disappear.
Piercing the solid surface of the ground,
And been held sacred by the simple nations
On whose paternal acres they were found.
Forged of celestial ore, that they might be
Divinely armed against unpleasant neighbours,
Or against slaves aspiring to be free.
Received in answer such a heavy stone
That he was silenced—God's own missile slaying
His humble priest. His death is not alone.
About Milan, was likewise roughly floored,
And picked up dead. And also two seafaring
Swedes met the same fate, they were killed on board.”
As that in our museum ever fell
On any town, not greater woes environ
The Russian fortress from our shot and shell.
Thinking of how it came here long ago—
Of its terrific fall in claps of thunder,
When first it came to settle here below.
In the eternal ages of the past,
It could descend to such a mean existence,
And deign to be exhibited at last.
Then go to see some foreign raree show,
Would, if they knew its value, stay and ponder
Over the most outlandish thing we know.
But to the very planet where we dwell,
Wherein it holds as strange a situation
As Orpheus in the corridors of Hell.
As vibrates through a saint's excited nerves
When he receives the sacred wafer kneeling,
And touches—tastes—the deity he serves.
Of some bright courser round the central sun,
I would receive a messenger angelic
From other kingdoms of the Eternal One.
And made of substance having bulk and weight;
But meteor-stars, so brilliant and aërial,
Are in themselves the same, though not so great.”
Flying above us as on angels' wings,
And we become philosophers on seeing
These fragments of the universe of things.
Humboldt, who always looks upon nature with the eye of a poet as well as the profound knowledge of a man of science, provided the materials for this poem in his wonderful book on the universe. (Cosmos, Bohn's edition, vol. i. from p. 97 to p. 126; also vol. iv. from p. 566 to p. 596.) The assistance derived from other sources is inconsiderable, and does not need specific acknowledgment.
The large mass of meteoric iron alluded to is under the window in the first room of the north gallery in the British Museum. It was sent from Buenos Ayres by Mr. Parish, in 1826. This fragment weighs 1400 lbs. It is supposed to be part of a large mass found at Otumpa, in the Gran Chaco Gualamba, in S. America, by Don Rubin de Celis, who estimated the weight of the whole at fifteen tons. It was, therefore, no exaggeration to compare the effects of such a missile to the havoc of shot and shell.
IODINE.
The elements were only four;
The curse of old Saint Athanase
Might cling to those who dreamed of more.
But now we have enlarged our faith,
And Science widens all her range,
Till recent knowledge holds as truth
What erst had sounded false and strange.
Is half so wonderful as thee,
Strange extract of the golden weeds,—
Strange daughter of the eternal sea!
And of our sixty elements
Not one has properties like thine,
Thou mistress of the solar light,
O violet-fuming Iodine!
Lie hid in many a mountain chain
Poor souls who dwell from year to year
In shadowed darkness of the brain.
For these thou hast a potent charm
That fills their hearts with health and light,
And makes a sunrise in the soul
That slept before in haunted night.
Encircling zones of golden weed,
A wondrous spirit lurks therein—
By fire alone it may be freed!
An artist-substance that receives
Distinct impressions line for line,
More sensitive than painter's eye,
The wonder-working Iodine!
NOTE.
Iodine derives its name from a Greek word, signifying “violet-coloured;” but the transcendent beauty of the colour of its vapour requires further elucidation than simply saying that it has a “violet hue.” If a little iodine be placed on a hot tile it rises into a magnificent dense vapour, fit for the last scene of a theatrical representation. This remarkable substance was discovered by accident about forty years ago. At that period chemical philosophy was in great repute, owing principally to the brilliant discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy. So singular a substance as iodine was to Davy a source of infinite pleasure. His great aim was to prove its compound nature; but in this he failed; and to this day it is believed to be one of the primitive “elements” of the world we live in. The sea furnishes an inexhaustible supply of iodine. Whatever be the food of sea-weeds, it is certain that iodine forms a portion of their daily banquet; and to these beautiful plants we turn when iodine is to be manufactured for commercial purposes. The inhabitants of the Tyrol are subject to a very painful disease called goître, or cretinism; for this malady iodine is a perfect cure. Photography tells the whole truth without flattery; and the colours used in this process are only silver and iodine. —Septimus Piesse, in the Mining Journal.
CORAL ISLANDS.
Where the water is warm and deep,
There are gardens fairer than any bee
Ever saw in its honied sleep.
And green, and purple, and blue,
In the waters deep which the golden light
Of the sun sinks softly through.
And many a sea-bird flies,
And fishes swim with silvery scales,
Above where that garden lies.
The ocean barren and bare,
While the fishes know of wondrous trees
That bloom and blossom there.
Where line and plummet fail,
To beds of flowers that feel and live
Like flowers in a fairy tale.
They lead a rooted life,
Perhaps to be plucked by the pretty hand
Of the merman's dainty wife.
Of the wondrous coral tree;
But its living flowers—you saw not them—
They died beneath the sea.
The ghastly skeleton;
But the living flowers were a fairer sight
That used to grow thereon.
Between us and the flowers,
Which some despise, but the poet thinks
Most lovely pets of ours.
Between our life and theirs,—
Between the lily pure and sweet,
And man with all his cares.
These gardens in the sea
Were by the ocean nursed and sown,
Or sung in verse by me.
And their substance wastes away,
Their skeletons lie on the ocean's bed
Like wrecks in slow decay.
The streams of the lower deep
Lay sand and shell and polished stones
In many a little heap.
Above their parents' graves;
Like a child that plays on its father's tomb,
They live beneath the waves.
And the sea brings sand and shell,
And buries them kindly where they grew
Like soldiers where they fell.
And the creatures bloom and grow,
Till the mass of death they rest upon
Comes upward from below.
In blue unfathomed seas,
Give rest to the feet of emigrant flocks,
But have no grass nor trees.
And white along the shore
The surf leaps high, and the waters make
Strong barrows as before.
For ancient British chiefs,
Wherein they lie with torques of gold,
Are those long coral reefs.
Those barren reefs extend,
Connecting distant groups of isles
With paths from end to end.
It washes daily food
To hungry mouths, and greedily
Out comes the slimy brood.
Like Roderick's merry men,
Out of the heather bleak and lone
In the gloomy Highland glen,
From their little hollow caves,
And each looks out for a welcome prize
From the drifting of the waves.
Open their fleshy leaves
To the ocean spray, whose snowy showers
The thankful mouth receives.
In the thrush's happy nest,
Open those flowers of starry shape,
When the sea disturbs their rest.
Above the highest tide,
It is a city of lifeless stone,
Whose citizens have died.
Where the waters never rise,
And each one lifted from the sea,
To the parching sunshine dies.
Brings other seeds to sow;
And on the rock new tenants find
A soil whereon to grow.
Than the flowers the ocean fed;
The hot sun nurses the living plants,
And withers up the dead.
Of many a hundred years,
When the coral rock is green and old,
A stunted shrub appears;
And herbs that thickly teem
Out of the soil on a lake's green bank,
Or the margin of a stream.
Have grown maturely fair;
Green forests wave, and summer smiles,
And human homes are there.
Swim out with laughing ease,
Shoals of girls from Isles of Palms
In tranquil southern seas,—
Of the coral's mighty work!
And still in the deep about the root
Of the rock those creatures lurk.
Nothing so weak and poor,
But may produce—if it work at all—
Results that shall endure.
Who lived and died unknown,
Have left us things more manifold
Than reefs of coral stone.
Shall leave results behind,
And build—not isle, nor reef, nor bay—
But the wondrous human mind.
To do his bidding here:
The coral shapes extensive lands
Where barren waters were.
However poor and mean,
Shall leave a sign as corals do,
To prove that we have been.
This was written after reading the sixth Lecture in Dr. Mantell's Wonders of Geology, to which the reader is referred for details.
THE EMPTY PUPA CASE.
In May or June,” an angler said to me,
“Without disturbing things that afterwards
Bright summer flies will be.
Some active ones are clad in waterproof,
And others rest in little huts of sand
Beneath a solid roof,
Cemented with a mortar of their own,
Wherein each baby insect is enshrined,
Secluded and alone.
Shines clearly through their native element;
And all those creatures, now mature and strong,
No longer feel content
Hiding in darkness all the summer days;
But one by one they leave their place of birth,
Till not a Pupa stays.
And dries himself, and basks in summer heat,
And breathes a lighter element, and tries
To extricate his feet
Mere fetters now—and splits his water clothes;
Leaves the case empty, and exhausted sinks
Beside it to repose.
Dry and expand beneath the pleasant sun.
His body grows—he is a thing transformed—
His new life is begun!
On his new wings he soars unto the light;
Another world—to infancy unknown,
Spreads out before his sight.
Indulging safely every healthy taste;
His life is short, but of his precious hours
No moment runs to waste.”
The simple life of its inhabitant,
And thought—how wise an insect to cast off
A form it does not want!
Ignoring the enlargement of the mind;
'Twere wiser thus to let our wings expand,
And leave our shells behind.
Notions of science, narrow, out of date,
Some who regard the empty Pupa case
Sincerely mourn our fate,
And now, no doubt, is dead in helplessness.”
Their dull compassion could not be bestowed
Where it was needed less.
Of late-unfolded thought doth onward fly,
Disporting in an element more pure
Than that wherein they lie.
A new world lies before—a wider field
For enterprise, whose wealth must ever be
From ignorance concealed.
In ancient channels, mourning him as dead,
And holding inquests on the empty shell
That he so proudly shed,
Swifter progression—freedom more complete.
It was his very nature to cast off
Those fetters from his feet!
THE BRITANNIA BRIDGE.
Learned savans, skilful blacksmiths, each are noble in their kind.
Come those intermediate workers,—England's civil engineers.
Doing wonders far surpassing all the feats of brutal strength.
So that one man's head shall govern all the labour of the throng.
Brain and muscle—age in seedtime—early manhood in its flower.
And above their lofty mainmasts hang those long colossal beams,
Often murmuring with music like the thunder's distant roar,
Of the iron walls about them, or the ships that sail below.
Poems wrought in beaten iron by our most creative minds!
Singing to succeeding ages of the enterprise of ours!
FOOTPRINTS IN SANDSTONE.
Let the subject of my legend be what happened long ago,
Yet no dim and vague tradition, but a fact we really know.
Of our ancient British heroes and long lines of famous kings,
These are credible no longer—these are all forgotten things.
Milton's song of Paradise, and Homer's “tale of Troy divine,”
These are ancient, noble subjects—modern still compared to mine.
Older than the oldest treasure from Egyptian deserts won,
Older than the arrowheads of Nineveh or Babylon.
Long before in God's creation worked the wondrous human hand;
Yet to human hearts it speaketh—let us read and understand,
How long in her secret archives Nature suffered it to rest,
Which no student ever enters, nor destructive worms infest.
Fail us, as they fail to tell of starlight which to-night appears,
How long it has travelled swiftly since it left its native spheres.
And we know that vast creations in that lapse have lived and died,
For they lie above each other whom the shelves of rock divide.
So the world seems older—older—and her story more sublime;
Farther still her first creation!—farther still her golden prime!
Stepped with awkward gait a creature, and a frog he seemed to be,
But on earth there dwells no longer such a mighty frog as he.
Where all nature was colossal, all things marvellously grand,
May have seen such creatures walking slowly on the ocean sand.
And the tide came calmly, gently; and its little breakers laid
Over them a thin deposit, which the rivulets conveyed
And the sea retired and left it smooth and barren as before;
But the marks of that inscription were preserved for evermore.
And they laid their sandy treasures where the creature used to tread;
Tracts of sand with marks of ripples did the tidewaves daily spread.
Save the splendour of the planets and the music of the sea,
Still the same the ocean murmurs in its old accustomed key.
Lizards like gigantic dragons such as quaint old Spenser sings,
Mighty reptiles, male and female, were the planets' queens and kings,
Flourished in our northern region, where the pale mechanic earns
Sadly a laborious living, and the furnace fiercely burns.
And the ocean swept the forests, reptiles, dragons, to their graves;
Afterwards with shells old Ocean all the conquered country paves,
For the subterranean forces laughed at Ocean's boastful song,
Lifting up the sunken country, for their backs were broad and strong,
Far below the waves are moaning, but with voices faint and weak,
Sorrowing for their lost dominion and the toys they vainly seek.
And the mind begins to weary dwelling on a theme so vast.
Let us dwell on it no longer. Man is on the earth at last,
Finding traces—footprints merely—having fingers like his own;
Something has been there before him, ere the rock was fully grown!
And the storm-waves of her trials leave her heart a barren waste.
'Tis a false and foolish proverb—deep they lie, but not effaced!
Like these clear and sharp inscriptions in the bosom of the earth,
Growing harder, more enduring, every moment since their birth.
But they have not left a vestige, and we seek their tracks in vain,
Fainter than a reptile's footprint, or the pitted marks of rain!
Leaving not a mark behind them speaking to a future age,
Neither public reputation nor a single printed page.
Leave impressions deep and lasting, which the years will not efface;
Earning thus immortal glory in the annals of the race.
See Mantell's Wonders of Geology, (6th edition), p. 553; and Lyell's Manual of Elementary Geology, (5th edition), pp. 339, 349, 402, 403, 417.
CASTS.
A heap of lifeless clay,
When his proud career was ended on his dreary prison isle,
When all was dark within,
His features pale and thin,
And the selfish lips lay open and relaxed into a smile,
So they took a careful cast
Of the stern face of the conqueror so beautiful in death.
And the bronze is dark and cold,
But the maggot of the mould
Shall never kiss its brazen lips, although they have no breath.
Of the tyrant of the race,
But Nature models carefully the children of her hand;
And little trivial things,
Like Earth's most famous kings,
Leave their lovely forms behind them in the marble of the land.
That Nature loved them well,
And made their form enduring when their substance was no more.
So she modelled trunks of trees,
And the fishes of the seas,
And the fern-leaves of the forest, and the shells upon the shore.
Let us enter and unlock,
And gather of her treasures in the bosom of the earth;
The medals of her reign,
And the records that have lain
Unopened by our ancestors who never knew their worth.
ENGINE DRIVING.
The fire will warm your toes;
Stand close, or you 'll be wet with steam!
All right, Tom?—Off she goes!”
Like demons dark and grim;
The fire was hot—the devil himself
Would have thought it hot for him.
Pierced through from ear to ear;
Beneath us shook the iron floor,
And rattled the engine-gear.
In many a cloudy mass,
And the March moon dropped a spot of light
On the dome of polished brass.
Of a town that slept below,
And mills with windows lighted up
In many a fiery row.
After the sunken sun;
And on the ridges of the hills
The evening star did run.
Looked out both left and right—
A sharp look-out the driver kept,
For it was almost night.
A loud and fearful roar—
The stoker pulled an iron chain,
And opened the furnace door.
A dazzling, steady glare
From the white-hot furnace suddenly—
It had been prisoned there!
The roar was long and loud;
And over our heads there swiftly ran
A silver stream of cloud.
Of the arch through which we sped,
With solid rock on every side,
And a mountain overhead!
The roar had died away;
The hill that we had hurried through
Behind us dimly lay.
And black the sky behind;
But straight before, the evening star
Grew brighter in the wind.
Beneath our dizzy height
We passed, as swiftly as a bird
That holds its homeward flight.
Between a frozen mere,
And crags that stood against the sky,
So cold, and deep, and clear.
And many a hill passed through;
And as the night advanced, the moon
And planets brighter grew.
Out of the western sky,
Our shadows were distinct and swift,
We could not pass them by.
And where the banks were steep,
Sank down, and on the quarried rocks
An equal speed did keep.
Flared past us as we sped,
But still the moon hung steadily
In the deep sky overhead.
Till we arrived at home,
And always kept her spot of light
Upon the brazen dome.
THE NIGHT TRAIN.
Heavily falls the rain;
But through the darkness and the storm
Speeds the Night Train.
In a little snug room;
The window-pane keeps out the rain,
And the lamp keeps out the gloom.
Through subterranean halls
Thunder our thousand wheels, yet still
The steady lamp light falls
Across the window-pane;
'Tis gone—the noise has ceased—we are
In the outer night again.
Fly lines of glaring fires,
And now I see wave up and down
The long festoons of wires,
And when the sun is high,
Our swift, invisible messengers,
The sparks of lightning, fly.
A hundred flying trains,
They pass them by as swallows pass
Old, clumsy, rustic wains.
Is thought—it moves unseen;
And in the darkness finds the goal,
And leaps what lies between.
Moves like the peopled train,
With labour and tumultuous noise,
And cries of fear and pain.
To keep appointed time,
Although the rule of watch and clock
May not be so sublime
Or ships that slowly sail;
Or that lone horseman who is lost
At night in many a tale,
Their hours both day and night,
And poets praise them none the less,
Nor quarrel with their light,
A thing of humble prose,
Because he follows day and night
Examples such as those.
The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth | ||